40-year-old Devaki singing. She lives in Athani along with her mother and a son. “Devadasi devachi bayako sarva gavachi”, is a Marathi saying meaning: ”Devadasi serves the God, but is the wife of the whole town.” The practice of dedicating young girls as a Devadasi to the temples of South India has been outlawed for more than 50 years, but the ceremonies still happen in secret and a Devadasi system is still practiced by many unfortunate little girls and young women from Maharashtra and Karnataka. As children, their parents gave them to serve Yallamma – the Goddess of fertility whose cult is thousands of years old, and who has followers spread all across South India. They are her daughters, worshipers and slaves, bond to her with the necklace called moodh .The system of devotional offering of girls to the deities in Brahmanic temples, once upon a time being the biggest honor to the society, today serves as the biggest shame and source of exploitation of the lower castes. Instead of continuing with the glorious past built on high education and artistic virtuosity, Devadasis today are just illiterate cheap prostitutes, some of them giving blessings to Yallamma’s worshipers or performing rituals during Yallamma’s festival. Until their puberty, girls given to the temples live there with other Devadasis witnessing all the activities the temple provides to the villagers, and by the age of 12, sometimes even before, they start practicing the Devadasi system on their own. They are forced to sacrifice their virginity to an older man, mostly to the high priest or to whom ever pays the most for the young virgin. What follows, is a life of sexual slavery, which turns the Devadasis into sanctified prostitutes. Though there are many laws concerning the Devadasi system abolition, not many have bothered to enforce the Law. Despite campaigns by India’s national and state governments, the system endures. What gives hope, are local NGOs educating former Devadasis into social worker positions who are on the mission of getting Devadasis off the streets and away from the temples.
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